Black Music Month 2024Like this list

13 items

• The Jazzmen

  How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America

  Tye, Larry,

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  An examination of the lives of three kings of jazz and their impact on American society. Biographer Tye has produced fairly substantial biographies of Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington , contemporaries who became three of the most…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Hip-hop Is History

  Questlove,

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  A memorable, masterful history of the first 50 years of an indelible American art form. The author’s observations spanning the entirety of hip-hop’s history are consistently illuminating—e.g., connecting its shift in five-year increments to the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Billie

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  Billie Holiday had one of the greatest voices of all time and changed the face of American music. She was a woman of breath-taking talent and global popularity while also stirring controversy. She started a notable rebellion singing “Strange…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Beautiful Ones

  Prince,

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  When Prince died in 2016, he left behind 30 pages of a memoir that his co-writer, Paris Review advisory editor Piepenbring annotated with the singer's own expansions and that Prince had intended as a "handbook for the brilliant community: wrapped in…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Gospel

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  From the blues to hip hop, African Americans have been the driving force of sonic innovation for over a century. Musical styles come and go, but there's one sound that has been a constant source of strength, courage and wisdom on any given Sunday.…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• African American Music Trails of Eastern North Carolina

  Bryan, Sarah,

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  This first-of-its-kind travel guide will take you on a fascinating journey to music venues, events, and museums that illuminate the lives of the musicians and reveal the deep ties between music and community. Interviews with more than 90 artists…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Black Punk Now

  Fiction, Nonfiction, and Comics

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  A multifaceted look, in several genres, at the places where Black people and punk rock meet. The present subversive and creative collection, write Spooner and Terry, is “a holistic definition of Black punk where every piece stands on level ground.”…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Amazing Grace

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  A documentary presenting the live recording of Aretha Franklin's album 'Amazing grace' at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts, Los Angelese in January 1972.

• Brother Robert

  Growing Up With Robert Johnson

  Anderson, Annye C.,

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  In conversation with journalist Lauterbach (Bluff City), Anderson offers vivid, personal glimpses of her stepbrother, legendary blues musician Robert Johnson (1911–1938), providing a colorful picture of the bluesman while attempting to debunk the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Living With Music

  Ralph Ellison's Jazz Writings

  Ellison, Ralph

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  Many people don't realize that novelist Ralph Ellison, best-known as the author of Invisible Man, was first an accomplished trumpeter and a student of musical composition, especially jazz. In Living with Music : Ralph Ellison 's Jazz Writings,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Tina

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  An intimate look at the legendary queen of rock and roll, this HBO original documentary charts Tina Turner's rise to early fame, her lifelong personal and professional struggles, and her rebirth as a global phenomenon in the 1980s. Presenting an…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Summer of Soul

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  Over the course of six weeks in the summer of 1969, just one hundred miles south of Woodstock, The Harlem Cultural Festival was filmed in Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park). The footage was largely forgotten–until now. Summer of Soul shines…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• How It Feels to Be Free

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  The inspiring story of how six iconic African American female entertainers – Lena Horne, Abbey Lincoln, Nina Simone, Diahann Carroll, Cicely Tyson and Pam Grier – challenged an entertainment industry deeply complicit in perpetuating racist…Read moreRead more of this annotation